04/07/2015 | TI5M TI5M - March, 2015 brought us yet another opportunity to gather our group of Costa Rican and American friends together to operate the ARRL DX Phone contest. Our group, in one form or another, has operated this contest from Costa Rica since 2002, and yet each year is a little better and a little different than previous years. 2015 was no exception, with a different location and a slight call sign change from our usual TI8M to TI5M. For 2015, 2 of our usual group members, TI2JCY and TI4ZM, were unable to join us, but a new op, TI2LCO, was able to step in and help us. We decided to put together a M/M effort this year to maximize operating opportunities, even though our third radio was only running 100w. As we ran this third radio almost exclusively on 10m, where QRO power is not so essential, it proved quite productive for us. And even though he was unable to join us, we want to extend thanks to Juan Carlos, TI2JCY, for allowing us to use his home for our efforts. Fortunately we have operated both the CQWW and ARRL phone events often enough that we have our equipment lists and antenna projects pretty well worked out. As usual, we arrived with everything on our lists ready to be assembled into stations, with everyone contributing items and assembling their part of the puzzle. We always have to put up wire antennas for 40-160m and again this year we had it all up and playing as well as possible in less than a day. We are somewhat space limited so putting antennas for 3 stations on a small piece of real estate and trying to keep cross-band interference to a minimum is always a challenge, but it worked out pretty well again. This year, after the primary antennas were up, we discussed options for something more potent on 40m. We decided to assemble a 40m 3-el inverted vee wire beam pointed north. It actually surprised us all how quickly and easily it went up. We hit our target freq on the first try with the driven element, and then the parasitic elements were added and actually improved the SWR a bit. And best of all, on air comparisons with our 40m sloper draped off one tower showed it was a 5 dB or better improvement in the direction it favored. And it was fairly directional, with good coverage to the eastern US/VE, while our tried and proven sloper favored the western US/VE. In use, this proved to be a good addition to our sloper. Operating the contest from TI is always a lot of fun, with good rate and this year continued this tradition. Overall, our score was down a bit from a couple of years ago, but we always enjoy gathering our group in Costa Rica to renew friendships, catch up on news and family happenings and of course, enjoy a couple of cold Imperials and have some excellent Costa Rican food. As always, the day after the contest saw we American team members headed to the airport for a flight home, saying “goodbyes” and vowing to come back again to visit and operate as soon as possible. Ours is truly a multi-national group of good friends gathering, assembling and operating radios for a few days and coming away with big smiles all around. Thanks to all who worked us as TI5M – we are already looking forward to being back again soon! Bob Wilson – W4BW TI5M Team 2015 - TI2KAC, TI2LCO, K4UN, W4BW, W4KTR, W4XO -- W4BW